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Tesla and Elon Musk won’t budge on what Cybertruck orderers want to hear
Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased the Cybertruck twice with two new images of a production candidate version of the all-electric pickup. Sightings of the Cybertruck have been plentiful through the past few months, but the real details that orderers want to hear are still being kept a mystery as the company and its CEO won’t budge on what they will be.
The Cybertruck is perhaps Tesla’s most anticipated vehicle in history. It was unveiled four years ago, and after delays and years of holdups in terms of development and production, Tesla is finally ready to begin deliveries by the end of the year.
However, the nearly two million people who have placed orders for the Cybertruck are still unsure what they will pay, what powertrain their truck will have, and when they will get it.
Tesla Cybertruck production candidate revealed by CEO Elon Musk
James Locke, a longtime Tesla owner, asked Musk yesterday when the company would release this information. “Enough with the hype, let’s get down to business,” he said, requesting any information on vehicle specs, pricing, and the delivery date event.
But Musk was unwilling to give that information, even still, as the Cybertruck nears initial deliveries.
“When we are ready to do so, we will,” he said. “While I think it is our best product ever, it is an extremely difficult product to build. We are in uncharted territory because it is not like anything else.”
Musk hammered this point home in an email to Tesla employees yesterday, which reminded production line associates, engineers, and others that their mistakes would be magnified due to the “bright metal” and “mostly straight edges” the Cybertruck design has.
“If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we,” Musk said.
In the four years since the Cybertruck was unveiled, a lot has changed, including the prices of vehicles. Mid-size pickups have increased from $33,262 in March 2019 to $41,176 in the same month in 2023. Full-sized trucks have swelled from $48,653 to $62,825, according to data from Kelley Blue Book.
Pricing is likely still up in the air, but Musk has hinted toward what potential Cybertruck pricing could be in the past. However, powertrains, at least for early vehicle builds, are more than likely finalized, and those who put a $100 deposit on the Cybertruck early on chose a specific configuration.
This option was eliminated a couple of years ago. Instead, Tesla simply allowed people to put money down, but there were no options for configurations.
We are getting down to the nitty-gritty with the Cybertruck, and with deliveries likely closing in within the next few months, people are still confused over what vehicle they will get and how much they will pay. If Tesla’s plan is to reveal this information at the delivery date, doesn’t that seem kind of late?
Nevertheless, the orderers of the Cybertruck are more than likely willing to give their money regardless, as they have been waiting patiently for the truck to be built and released for years.
Last night, we found out the Cybertruck Delivery Event would be held in Texas, and not Fremont, California, as batches of the pickup had been spotted at Tesla’s Northern California production facility.
Elon Musk
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.
An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.
Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.
The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.
Footage of the plane crash from earlier today | #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/iGoOtnd6cD
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) September 6, 2026
Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.
The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.
Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.
Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.
Tesla has reached a notable benchmark in its autonomous driving program after its Robotaxi fleet surpassed one million miles of unsupervised operation. The company made the announcement during its Cybercab event in Austin on September 3.
Tesla Vice President of AI Ashok Elluswamy told attendees he was happy to report the fleet had achieved one million miles of unsupervised Robotaxi operation as a testament to safety.
The new total marked a sharp increase from the 380,000 unsupervised miles Tesla disclosed during its second-quarter 2026 earnings update in late July.
In roughly six weeks, the company added about 620,000 miles. That acceleration followed Tesla’s decision to remove in-vehicle safety monitors from most of its operations outside the San Francisco Bay Area.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla first launched Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 with safety drivers present. It later began fully unsupervised rides and expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The San Francisco Bay Area remains the exception, where a safety monitor still rides in the vehicle under California permitting rules.
The company has not released a city-by-city breakdown of the one million unsupervised miles.
The milestone arrived as Tesla began offering public Cybercab rides in Austin. The purpose-built vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is designed only for autonomous ride-hailing. Production versions joined the existing fleet of modified Tesla vehicles already operating in the service.
Tesla’s unsupervised mileage is growing at a double-digit weekly rate according to earlier company comments, yet its fleet size remains modest compared with established competitors. Waymo has accumulated more than 200 million fully autonomous rider-only miles. Tesla has described its own unsupervised operations as having recorded zero notable incidents in the period leading up to the July update.
The one-million-mile figure reflects Tesla’s shift from supervised testing to broader driverless service in multiple states. It also highlights the company’s strategy of using both existing Model Y vehicles and the new Cybercab to scale its network.
Credit: Tesla
Whether the rapid recent growth continues will depend on further city expansions, regulatory approvals, and the performance of the purpose-built Cybercab in everyday paid rides. Tesla has not specified how many of the latest miles involved the new vehicle versus the rest of the fleet.
The announcement underscores Tesla’s progress toward a larger robotaxi network while illustrating the remaining gap in total autonomous experience relative to longer-operating rivals.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this week that 24-hour Robotaxi service is close. Replying on X to a rider who wanted Cybercab trips all night, he wrote that the capability would arrive “next month or so” once “the next tech to merge on the v15 plan” is ready.
The comment landed on September 4, one day after Tesla opened public Cybercab rides in Austin. It is the clearest near-term timeline yet for overnight unsupervised operation. Tesla’s paid Robotaxi network currently runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
next month or so. the next tech to merge on the v15 plan will enable it.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 4, 2026
That 16-hour window is shorter than the 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule the company used for much of the prior year.
Elluswamy did not name the specific feature or say whether the change would apply first to purpose-built Cybercabs, the existing Model Y fleet, or both. He also offered no city-by-city rollout list. The link to Full Self-Driving v15 is nevertheless significant.
Tesla has described v15 as a step-change architecture with seven parallel improvement tracks and roughly ten times more parameters than earlier builds. Early versions of that software already operate on the Robotaxi fleet and contain about 40 percent of the planned gains.
By July 2026, the unsupervised fleet had logged more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states with what the company called an impeccable safety record and no notable incidents caused by the vehicles themselves. Tesla has repeatedly argued that camera-based end-to-end neural networks, rather than extra sensors, are the core of the solution.
Overnight service would test that claim in lower-light conditions and would also raise vehicle utilization, a key variable for Robotaxi unit economics. The company has already begun using public Superchargers at night and is building dedicated Robotaxi charging sites.
Riders have asked why software must change if the cars already drive in the dark. The practical answer appears to be reliability and scale: Tesla has held back mass expansion until more of the v15 stack is merged, citing the need for higher confidence before putting thousands of unoccupied vehicles on streets around the clock.
If the next module arrives on the timetable Elluswamy sketched, 24-hour service could begin in October 2026 in at least some markets.
That would mark a shift from a daytime-bounded pilot to a service that can run whenever demand exists, including the late-night hours that have so far remained out of reach.
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone
